November 30, 2006

Joanna Newsom's Ys

By | November 30, 2006

Only a master of haiku could adequately sum up Joanna Newsom’s new album, Ys, in 150 words. In five ten-minute songs, the dreamlike sound of her first label release, The Milk-Eyed Mender, expands into colorized, ethereal vision.
Unlike Iron and Wine, who lost their crucial bareness when Sam Beam jumped from living-room recordings to the studio, Newsom’s own shift has allowed her to express her imagination fully.
The album navigates the difficult territory between calm insipidity and stormy confusion expertly. Her unique voice sounds crisp and clean, rolling over the emotionally laden classical backing like a schooner over ocean waves. In “Emily, Sawdust & Diamonds, and Only Skin,” some of the prettiest, that voice spins some of the most majestic songs I’ve ever heard.
They make Ys the kind of album you should honestly save for your children someday. Newsom’s a masterful sea captain, and this record ranks along Brightblack Morning Light’s self-titled LP as the semester’s best.

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If Putin did it, he certainly would not have used a pussy radioactive element like Polonium-210. I mean, like, give the man some credit. He’s the president (tsar?) of the former USSR headquarters — dude would’ve gotten like two henchmen to hold the double agent bastard’s tongue so Putin could’ve Bowie-knifed that shit, or at least judo-chopped it. (Putin has earned a rainbow of felt belts and is well known for his devastating hip toss.) So everyone, PUH-LEASE. Besides, would the Kremlin choose an element that was named in honor of its discoverer, Marie Curie (a woman), whose homeland happens to be the nefarious Poland. Politics 101 people — Poland and Russia are like Cain and Abel. Vlady would not want any credit given to the whiney, ass pain-inducing Polish for anything – good, bad, or radioactive. Put 2 and 2 together folks; it doesn’t add up to 210.

ByNovember 30, 2006

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Every year, as the fall semester winds down and exams loom just ahead, the editorial board of The Cornell Daily Sun looks to faculty and staff for help and feedback in order to undertake one of its toughest assignments of the year: choosing, amongst 13,000-odd incredibly talented undergraduates, the best of the best. While we know that Cornell graduates are the ones changing the world, we’d like to give credit to 25 students who are making a difference already, here in Ithaca and around the world. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about your classmates, and more importantly, follow their example.